Monday, January 5, 2009

New Orleans 70.3 in 90 days

That is what gets me out training – except in the pool. I had a great weekend – actually starting around 12/30 – I rode a lot and ran not nearly enough but more than I’m hoping my competition did. While Ben and Courtenay were visiting I was able to scamper out for the 1st hill repeat workout of the season – 4x the local hill (about 7% grade and .25 miles long, maybe .26). The goal is to hit about a 180+ HR on each repeat while also maintaining decent form. The first one went fine, the 2nd one I was ready to quit and walk it home (about 1 mile from the hilltop) but I knew that I’d have to face Ben after a 25 min run workout as well as know I quit after only 50%. I also know that it always hurts the worst and then it gets better. Always. It did get better and I had 2 more good repeats and even saw (unintentionally) 190 bpm!

I then came down with a bit of a sinus bug which kept me in but I still got out when I had good patches.

I rode with Ian and got in 2.5 hours on the bike – doing my 45 rpm hills at 300w on Thursday, sick Friday and then I got out do ride easy on Sat for 2-3 hours. It turned out that I was able to set some new 30 and 60 min avg. watt records while climbing up Mt. Tam and the 7 Sisters (I successfully counted 7 too). I ended up getting in 257 avg watts for the ride – when I had NOT intended anything but to suffer with my stuffed head and hope to ride at 220. To continue with the theme of ‘more is more’ training – I decided to run 13 miles and put in some nice steep hills just about when it starts to hurt (miles 7-10) and I included Corinthian and Belvedere hills which are about 7-12% for 5 mins and 10 mins respectively. I had clearly been dehydrated from the past few days and really suffered as I saw my avg HR go from a low Z2 (160) to 180+. I got up and did yoga today and skipped the swim because I’m tired and would rather work and not swim in the rain (stupid but true).

Below is the anatomy of my hill repeat workout – you can see I sort of walked/jogged a bit more between the 3rd and 4th effort – slacker? No, I actually ran further down the hill for a few extra seconds of hurl inducing pain for the final repeat.

Now that the holidays and excuses are mostly over, I’m onto a good schedule ~12-15 hours:

and yes, I know I need to swim more. Ideally I’ll add that in on Mondays and make it more of a recovery effort. I have a terrible time being motivated to swim outside unless it’s sunny – warm and sunny is best, but right now I’ll take sunny.

Note: I also mention my watts and know this is different for everyone based on their weight and fitness and age. My Z2 is 220w-260w, towards the end of long rides 260w is actually Z3. My Z3 is about 260-300W. Z4 is 300-350W. My max HR on the bike is around 200 and running it is around 210. I’m 37 and my max HR hasn’t changed much in the past 15 years.

2 comments:

I am signed up for this event. It is my first tri at this large of a distance. For some reason the 1st of the year has brought me some extra training ambition. I can't wait, but I know I'm going to start to get real nervous in a few weeks.

I made an iGoogle gadget that is a count down to the event. A little extra motivation